With the emergence of the Internet, consumers and merchants are using the Internet to engage in electronic commerce. To purchase products over the Internet, consumers typically prefer to use electronic payment services. Such services offer a variety of features, including security, privacy, anonymity, and access to transaction histories. The basic model for such services requires a communication link between a consumer's computer and a merchant's computer, and a link between the merchant's computer and a payment server. To use such a payment service, consumers are required to install large amounts of software (commonly called “wallets”) onto their computer for the purpose of storing an electronic representation of money or for identifying sources of payments. An example of electronic payment services include such services as SET Specification, HP, CyberCash, IBM, OTP, etc).
If a consumer installs the software for a wallet onto the consumer's computer, the consumer typically has to update the wallet software to correct bugs, to add features, or to improve service performance. Further, the wallet software is accessible only on the computer on which the wallet software is installed. As a result, the consumer must install a copy of the wallet software onto each computer from which the consumer desires to access the payment service.
Once the wallet from a payment service is installed, the consumer may be limited as to where the consumer can shop because of the proprietary nature of the electronic payment service business. Typically a consumer can only purchase a product or service from a merchant who accepts payments from the same payment service. As a result, merchants may opt to use a plethora of payment services thereby raising costs and requiring merchants to manage a variety of software programs.
Present payment services require consumers to go through a large number of steps to complete a transaction. Research has shown that the more steps a consumer is required to take to complete a transaction, the more likely that the consumer will terminate the purchase process prior to completing the purchase. Experience has also shown that, as impressive as wallets may be from a theoretical perspective, consumers don't like them and don't use them. As a consequence, transactions are performed over the Internet in non-secure environments or in inefficient manners, or both.
In order to avoid such problems, some inventions have created new types of systems. One such system requires consumers to use a payment server which sends an access message to a merchant thereby causing the desired product to be sent to the consumer. The access messages include such information as a product identifier and a message authenticator. The message identifier is necessary to identify which product is to be sent and the message authenticator is necessary to ensure that the access message is legitimate. Once the payment server authorizes the transaction, an access message is sent to the merchant. However, these type of systems go against the current mode of operation where merchants determine the authorization of a transaction. Merchants typically want to control the authorization of a transaction in the same manner as they are accustomed to. Presently, if a consumer purchases an item at a store, the merchant controls the authorization of the transaction.
Therefore, a need exists for a system that allows a consumer to send payment information to a merchant's computer over the Internet in a manner that offers security, allows access from any computer that has access to the Internet, delivers payment information to a merchant's computer regardless of the payment system that the merchant uses to process transactions, allows system upgrades without dependency on the consumers, and allows a consumer to register with a consumer information server in advance of a decision to purchase.